In the CrossFire
by BERSER-CAR
Summary: Thirteen completely unrelated people wake up on a ship in the middle of an ocean. Home seems a distant thought, and in this crazy world, a normal person would find surviving impossible. However, these aren't ordinary people. They are those who have surpassed limits and have survived all odds to gain power. Well, all except one, but they don't know that, do they?


Ha, new story i wanted to type out. a bit short by my standards, but that would probably be because i got a bit lazy near the end. Still procrastinating procrastinating by writing a story in order to avoid writing writing a story in order to avoid homework.

everyone here should be recognizable except for three. I'll put who the people are at the bottom if someone asks for it, but for now i will only put a little bio on the first guy because he is from some obscure manhwa that no one knows.

i seriously wanted to put dio or jojo or goku in this, but that's just too overpowered.

disclamers disclamers BLAAAHHH.

* * *

Ju Ingong was pretty sure this wasn't where he fell asleep last night.

He was sleeping in an extremely comfortable bed, perhaps the most comfortable bed he had ever slept in. The black sheets looked to be made of some sort of extremely soft silk material and the bed itself felt like he could just melt in it.

The furniture adorning the room, while sparse, seemed to be of the expensive kind, with the patterns in the dark wood of the nearby table being highlighted from the nearby window.

Besides the table and the bed, he could also make out a large desk at the other end of the room, two sets of double doors, with one next his bed and one at the other end of the room, a mirror, and two other large windows next to the one he had noted earlier.

After taking the brief inventory of the room, he realized this was defiantly not the small apartment flat he had fallen asleep in.

He got out of the bed and decided to try and pace around the room to see if he could maybe remember how he got here as well as his next course of action.

Maybe this was a prank by his wife, yung-hee? No, even this would be going a bit far for a prank. Plus, she wasn't really one to try and prank him... Maybe he had been kidnapped? That seemed the more likely option, but then why was he not tied up and why was he in some expensive room where there weren't even any guards? It made no sense...

He decided walking around was not helping him so he decided to try and explore a bit.

He looked out the window first, to see if he could see anything that could give him a location. He had expected to see a few buildings or maybe a forest or a wasteland, but what he had not expected to see was just a vast expanse of ocean.

He was mildly surprised at the view, mainly because he felt something was off with what he was seeing and what his other senses were telling him. He realized he should be smelling something vaguely similar to oak and the ocean from inside this room, but it didn't really smell like anything to his senses, as though it was completely sterile. He also couldn't hear anything other than his footsteps in this room. Was it sound proof?

He tested it by opening the window closest to him, I patching it and pushing in outward. There was a rush of air and indeed, he could now both smell and hear the ocean.

He quickly closed it after confirming his hypothesis and immediately thought about a few other things that seemed strangely off about his current predicament.

He realized that he couldn't feel any kind of way that would normally come from a ship. He had assumed that this was some sort of ship because he was out on the water, but did that truly mean he was on one?

He walked up to the mirror and came across the other thing that was bugging him. He looked at himself, looking back at the scary face which had tormented him in grade school but had allowed him to survive high school and even get him a wife. He noticed still had his dark skin and spiky brown hair topping his head, but there was something different. Instead of the white t-shirt and pants he had been wearing last night, he was now wearing what he had worn when he had been in his later years of high school, a brown blazer with matching brown pants and a red shirt, along with some black shoes. They apparently were resized to fit his now taller frame, but they looked and felt the same.

Perhaps someone was out to get him? Had someone found out his secret, and had taken him here in order to carry out his or her revenge, where they could do anything they wanted and he couldn't escape because he was in the middle of the ocean?

Why was he here? Where was he? How did he get here?

His thoughts kept drifting back to those questions. He shook his head to dispel himself of those thoughts and walked over to one of the doors, just to see where they led.

He grabbed the handle and pushed down, but found it to be locked in place, so he moved over to the other doorway, to find that one surprisingly open.

He didn't fully open it, instead creating a crack and peering through it to look for any dangers. Once he saw the sink, though, he realized he had just opened the door to a bathroom.

'Of course whoever kidnapped me would let me have access to the bathroom.' He thought to himself.

Feeling safe from any dangers, he walked in confidently and took a brief look around.

There were two doors, one probably leading to some sort of closet and the other a toilet, as the only thing he could see were the very large tub, the misted glass shower stall, and two sinks which were spaced a good distance apart.

He thought briefly that maybe someone had kidnapped him to give him a good time, but those thoughts were quashed under the torrent of questions currently circling his head.

One thing did stick out though, and that was the gold plate directly in between the sinks. On it was a pitcher of water and a strange fruit of the likes he had never seen.

The fruit itself looked like some kind of mango, except it had all kinds of weird swirly patterns on it and it looked slightly like Jell-O.

He realized that he was in fact starving and weighed the pros and cons of actually eating some strange fruit that may or may not be poison. He thought that, if they hadn't killed him so far, why in the world would they give him something poison now? But then they might just have some sort of sick sense of humor...

Deciding that it was safe to eat, he picked it up and took a bite out of it.

He quickly decided that it was in fact, poison.

It tasted horrible, worse than anything he could possibly imagine. He felt himself throw up a little in his mouth at just how bad it tasted.

However, ignoring his common sense, he picked up the pitcher and tried swallowing it using the water to dilute the taste. It worked somewhat, but it was only after he was done drinking did he realize that he had actually swallowed the most likely poisoned fruit-thing.

He looked back at the fruit only to realize that there was only decay where the rest of the fruit has been, which supported the idea that he was going to die a horrendous, pain filled death.

He sat on the floor, lamenting his life, and how he would never see his wife or home again. About how he would die alone thanks to some nut job with a sick sense of humor. About how he would haunt them in the afterlife once he died.

Problem was, after what felt like thirty minutes of sitting on the floor and waiting for his eventual death, he realized he didn't even feel slightly like he was going to die. There was no pain or sudden decay of limbs. In fact, he felt slightly better, if he had to say anything.

He stood back up and looked at the plate, which now held just a thin layer of dust and wondered exactly what had just happened. Line of though was quickly cut off by a small glint in the pile of sand, which he hesitantly went to pick up.

He pulled on the shiny object and was rewarded with the sight of a gold key with the word 'captain' chiseled into the side. It looked like one of those really old keys, with just a barrel and a small dual hook at the end.

He took the key and immediately went over to the other door he had tried opening earlier and slowly placed the key in the hole, earlier wonderings about strange fruits placed at the back of his mind.

He turned the key.

The door opened.

He stepped through.

Ichigo Kurosaki casually observed the group currently wandering about the top deck of the ship he had found himself aboard.

Like the others, he had been apparently dragged here while asleep and with no idea what was going on.

He had just managed to rescue Tia Harribel from the Wandenreich, which had been no easy feat, only to collapse with her on his back in the soul society's fourth division barracks to get healed.

Problem was, when he awoke, he found himself in some strange lavishly decorated room with his old Bankai clothes on and Zangetsu, his sword, in shikai.

At first, he thought he had been kidnapped by the Wandenreich, as the room seemed to fit with their tastes in design, but when he found the key on the table, thin and long like a miniature stiletto knife with the words 'first mate' etched on the side, he started to have his doubts.

Said doubts reached their maximum as soon as he had reached the top of the ship.

He, along with several others, was trapped on a boat which was banked on some kind of underwater shoal in the middle of the ocean, with no land for miles.

Of course, he could have tried to jump off and try running for the nearest landmass by using spirit ribbons as a guide, but there were several problems with this.

First, although he didn't know any of these people, he felt obligated to help them out. Apparently, they were stuck here too, and he couldn't leave it on his conscious to leave them here. Although, he did find it odd that they could see him at all, considering he could feel their reiryoku and it didn't seem high enough to be able to see spirits such as him.

Next was the issue of the Arrancar. Although she was relaxing near the prow of the ship, he couldn't leave her alone in case she decided to do something. Although he had saved her, he had only done it because the Wandenreich was going to use her for something. He still didn't trust her enough to go running off and leave her alone with the others, and he definitely was against the idea of letting her wander around on actual land if he brought her with him. He still wasn't sure why she hasn't just left using a garganta, but he would stick around to keep her under control until she decided to return to Hueco Mundo.

Then there was the issue of distance. He had used his sensing abilities to try to find the nearest land mass, but came up with no signatures other than fish and the people on this ship. If the nearest piece of land was too far away for him to sense, then he wasn't going to try to exhaust himself running across the ocean.

Finally, although he was in his shinigami clothes and had his shikai strapped to his back, he wasn't planning on revealing what he could do to a group of people who he didn't quite trust yet, although he was willing to help them out. He knew the risks of revealing his shinigami powers to normal people, and he was in no hurry to reveal them either. Best to let them think he was just some sort of cosplayer or a guy with a giant sword or something...

Yeah, he was defiantly not leaving any time soon.

"Hey! Are you even listening?!" He winced slightly at the loud voice in his ear. He had been talking to this spiky haired blond, Naruto or something similar to that, but he had gone off on a tangent a while ago so he had decided to instead go back to his own thoughts.

"Oh, sorry, I was lost in my own thoughts for a bit. Strange situation we're in, you know?"

The blond nodded in response. "Yeah yeah! I mean I've been in some pretty crazy situations before but this is probably the weirdest one yet! I mean, this has even got to top that one time I snuck into this other v-"

A small, feminine hand came up over his mouth and silenced the next part of his sentence. "E-excuse us for a moment. Please. I n-need to speak with N-naruto for a moment, I'm s-sorry for being rude, b-but it is u-urgent..."

Ichigo looked down at the girl. She had long, dark blue hair, pale skin, and completely white eyes with a tinge of lavender, making him think that she might be blind, although she seemed to move around just fine. She wore a light blue jacket with white sleeves and dark blue pants on her torso and legs. Unlike the blond loudmouth, she seemed to be extremely introverted and nervous.

He watched as the blond shot her a look before widening his eyes and nodding before turning around to a more private part of the ship. "Talk to ya later, giant sword guy! I really want to see what else you can do with that thing!"

He groaned. He had had a small fight with the Arrancar and one of the people on this ship due to a misunderstanding, but that had been quickly corrected. Problem was, while he had caused a bit of a stir because while he still hoped they believed he was some sort of cosplayer, he had demonstrated some expertise with a sword, which he really had wanted to keep hidden.

He shook his head and went back to looking at everyone else.

Today was going to be a long day.

Kiyomaro looked towards the sky for the umpteenth time today.

Everything was giving him a serious headache.

The reason? He had to many questions in his head hat were instantly responded to with either a very complex and nonsensical answer or he was literally bombarded with a large amount of information with little in the way of sorting it before it left his head again.

Sometimes, he hated his answer-talker ability.

He really shouldn't be surprised by his current predicament. Really, he shouldn't be. He had been in an all-out battle royal between one hundred demon kids with his little demon kid having the ability to shoot lightning out of his mouth, and he had won.

But still, the information he had gleamed was a bit... Surprising.

He had learned long ago not to ask general questions when it came to the answer talker. When he had, the result was not pretty. A simple question of "where am I?" turned into "where am I in relation to the universe?" And the answer he got was similar to a whole room of people talking at the same time. It just caused one big headache.

And of course, because he was still trying to get used to shutting it off, he had asked one question that had nearly caused him to faint because of all the white noise in his head.

"Who are these people?"

He had probably gotten more information on them than he ever needed or wanted, but all of it came so fast and so much came at once that he had only gleamed a small amount of information from each of them. He had only gotten their names and some random information which he couldn't match up with anyone because of how jumbled it was. He had gotten some things like hobbies (apparently someone on this ship likes to cook), to just a random string of numbers. What did 88 56 84and 10031911 mean anyway?

There were two pieces of information that he was able to connect to a single person, though, and only because they were repeated so many times after he had asked the question.

'Sword' and 'distortion'.

He looked towards the person in question, currently walking in the waist high water near the hull of the ship. He had volunteered to check if, when the tide eventually came in, there were going to be any holes or debris blocking their chances of actually getting to land. Both his shirt and jeans had to be completely soaked, but he kept slogging through, as if it weren't a problem. His auburn hair was slightly damp from what he could tell, meaning that at some point he had probably dunked himself under the waves to check for damages as well.

Shirou seemed to somehow have noticed him watching and looked up, locking his golden brown eyes with his own dark brown concentric circled eyes before nodding and shouting up that he had yet to find and kind of damage on the ship, nor any debris. Kiyo nodded back and went back to thinking.

He had already known the ship was sound and would be leaving from this place in around forty-seven minutes if his answer talker was correct. He didn't want to reveal his ability though, because for one it was defiantly not a thing to share and second, his ability was dangerous, to both himself and to others.

Nope, not sharing it until he was sure it wouldn't cause any problems and only if he had to.

It had been hard enough convincing the blond with the gold eyes, Edward he believed his name was, that it was a genetic disorder.

Although that woman with the purple shaded long hair was certainly giving the gold eyed one a headache. He seemingly couldn't figure out how someone could have square pupils, until she removed her glasses and revealed that it was only her glasses that were causing the square pupils.

Kiyo knew better than that though. He had used answer talker to analyze the glass and he had discovered that there was no way light going through that glass could cause anything to have a square shape. In fact, the glasses didn't have any curve to them at all. They were just flat pieces of glass attached to a frame.

Too many questions and not enough ways to ask a question in order to get a specific answer.

He pulled his arm from behind his head and trailed it down his white button up shirt and into the pocket of his light blue pants. He reached in and pulled out the key he had found in his room. The key looked like two keys, one held vertically and the other horizontally and had fused them together, making it four sided. He held it up and saw the word 'navigator' on it. He placed it back in his pocket and sighed.

Today was defiantly a headache inducing day.

Sawada Tsunayoshi was terrified.

He had found himself in a room the size of his room at home, but it was most definitely not his room.

He had found a weird key with an x shaped tip with the initials 'Q.M.' on it, and had used it to get out of the room, only to find himself in another strange scenario with this group of odd people.

Well, at least these people weren't trying to actively kill him and try to make his life miserable. He had talked to a kid his age, a white haired guy named soul, who explained that he and this other person, who had left to go check the rest of the ship, had been abducted in their sleep.

He had talked to a few others, and they had the same story as well, with all of them being taken from their homes and dropped here on a ship, in the middle of the ocean, just left to die...

Although, according to Kiyomaro, one of the people he talked to, the tide was still low, so here was a chance that by nightfall the tide would come up and let them set sail.

He really hoped none of them were affiliated with the mafia and that he being brought here was just a coincidence. He really hoped, mainly because the orange haired guy with the giant butcher knife on his back looked like he was part of some yakuza or mafia hit man squad out to get him. His provocative female companion wasn't helping with her own sword sheathed to her back.

He hoped he wasn't lying when he said they were just cosplayers going to a convention together and he just tended to practice kendo after school...

Other that Kiyomaro and soul, he had had a brief discussion with the man with the yellow sunglasses and gravity defying hair. He had called himself Vash, which seemed a bit strange for a name, but he had heard some strange ones in his life time.

Vash stood tall, at around six feet without his hair looming over him like a bunch of bamboo shoots. He wore a red coat that looked like it came from out of the American Wild West, and thick black boots. Despite his overbearing appearance, he seemed to be a genuinely happy to lucky guy, kind of Yamamoto in a sense. He was lax, and even though he had tried to hit on all the girls on the ship (all had turned him down), he seemed to do it more out of habit than actual love or lust.

He was currently looking down at the water, as he had been for however long they had been out here. He had seen him swimming when he had first arrived on deck, but after he had shown up, he had quickly climbed back on board and took a seat near the back of the ship, right on the railing, looking down at the water.

He had talked to Vash and he had responded that where he had come from, there hasn't been a lot of water around for him to swim in, as it had been mostly desert all around him for a long time.

He also mentioned he was a pacifist who didn't like fighting, which he whole hearted my agreed on.

Now he was just sitting in the shade in his suit, with soul somehow managing to go to sleep on deck.

Although he was terrified of the current situation, he felt he could trust these people to help him get home as they really didn't seem to be bad, in a sense.

He had started to feel the urge to dose off like his white haired companion had, and so he decided maybe it would be alright to rest his eyes, just a little.

Ju had been wandering around this place for a while.

He had found plenty of rooms, most of which were just empty, but he had found the occasional odd room that had some stuff in it.

He had been rather happy to have stumbled across the kitchen, but once he realized that, although the kitchen seemed to be of the modern kind and large enough to have been part of a restaurant, there was actually no food hidden within the fridge or the cupboards.

He had managed to also find a library with no books, and a bathroom with no actual running water. It was similar to a house that had just been built; no food, barely any furniture, and no water.

He hadn't yet seen the top floor because he had been too preoccupied with sneaking around the ship. He hasn't yet seen any traps, but that hasn't stopped him from freezing lightly and peeking around corners for danger. He knew his luck, so he hoped to avoid a fight if he could help it.

Now though, he had carefully stalked over to a room at the far end of the hall.

Unlike every other hallway, which seemed to just be filled with doors, this one had just one singular door at the end. He had seen every other room on this floor that he could open (which were surprisingly few), and had been trying to avoid going upstairs as long as possible, so this was the only one left to check.

He would have much rather stayed in the room he had woken up in, but he knew he would have to leave eventually, and he felt that something was going on, but he couldn't figure what it was. Thus, a combination of fear, boredom and restlessness and forced him to continue searching.

He gently rested his hand on the handle and pushed in, not a creek coming from the hinges, which he felt grateful for.

He inched his head in and was surprised to find a rather small room, with only a window spanning one wall, revealing the sight of the endless ocean beyond, and a table with a slightly askew wooden chair in front of it.

He walked up to the table, carefully closing the door behind him, and carefully examined the sole object that rested on its surface.

It was a reddish-brown book, with a simple lock on the surface. The pages looked worn and yellowed, as though it had been flipped through many times and the cover itself sorted some wear are tear.

Ju Ingong carefully looked at it and attempted to open it, but found it firmly shut by the clasp on the front. He tried forcing it open, but once again, the same result.

He knew that no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't be able to open the book with his max amount of strength. Plus, he didn't like doing anything physical if he could help it.

"Needs a key..." He said to himself. "Only key I have is..."

He took out the strange key he had found in the remains of the fruit he had eaten earlier. Deciding it was worth a shot, he decided to try and pop it in the lock and see how well it went.

To his utter shock, a small click sounded as he turned the key, revealing the contents of the book.

Ju scanned the pages, noting that it was in some language that he had never seen before, but there was some information that he could pick up. Said information was that with each page of writing, on the opposing page there was some kind of extremely detailed drawing.

The very first page actually held a very detailed depiction of the key he currently held right now, along with scribbles he couldn't understand as they looked to be in an entirely different language.

Seeing as he couldn't actually read it, he decided to skim through the book.

There really wasn't much from what he could see. Occasionally, there where what looked like a very detailed map of an island or a chain of islands, along with several extremely strange drawing of creatures the like of which he had never seen. He simply shrugged these off as the doodling of the man who wrote the book, seeing as there was no way a shark with the head of a Venus fly trap could actually exist. It was extremely detailed in its depiction though.

One thing he found of interest was a series of pages that seemed to be in relation to a fruit, similar to the one he ate earlier. It showed a strange, watermelon like fruit with swirly patterns, along with an arrow pointing down showing a steady progression of what happened after a chunk had been taken out. Later, there was a very detailed man, with the faded watermelon fruit from before centered on the stomach area, who could now apparently do things with keys.

The depictions showed the man making them, controlling their size, levitating them, opening things that shouldn't be able to be unlocked, and many other depictions of the same man doing a staggering amount of strange things with keys.

Ju assumed that the person, like with the shark-plant, had just gotten bored and had decided to go with keys as his main doodle topic for a few pages.

Near the very end of the book, though, was a series hastily drawn sketches of blocks with even more strange writing on them, and the notes on the left hand side were also apparently hastily written in. Seeing as he couldn't exactly read what was being said and these last set of drawing were at the very back, he opened to the very last page and saw something strange.

Written there, in a language that he could understand, was the words 'the world', along with a map reminiscent of those globes he had seen in classrooms on occasion.

He looked at the map, but couldn't find anything that fit into his memory of the world map. It had a strip of jagged land running diagonally around the entire planet, with the words 'east blue', 'west blue', 'north blue', and 'south blue' in their corresponding directions. Also, written on a line perpendicular to the other, which was labeled 'red line', was another labeled 'grand line, with the writing covering that entire section in the language of the previous pages.

Finding it completely useless in terms of information he currently wanted, he decided to close the book. He then picked up the book and tucked it into his pocket.

However, just as he was about to turn around, he realized the chair leg had been a slight bit closer to his own leg that he had thought, and thus he lost his balance slightly and tilted backwards.

A slight crackling sound followed by a small whoosh now came from the space where his head had occupied before. His eyes focused right above him to see the sleeve of a white coat before it disappeared faster than it had appeared.

"Surprising. You managed to dodge that without actually looking at me. Color me mildly impressed." He heard a voice call out above him.

He corrected his posture and looked at the man who had tried to knock his head off of his shoulders mere seconds ago. The man was currently smoking a cigarette, the smoke slightly obscuring his glasses and his white hair. The clothes he wore were patched together from other clothes, with his turtleneck being a mishmash of dark brown colors and his white doctor jacket having stitches running across it.

"Although I was only going to knock you out, now, I may have to do something a bit more... Drastic." He pulled back his fist.

"Whoa, hold on, I think you-" he wasn't able to speak another word as a fist barreled past his head, dodging only by throwing himself to the side. He heard the sound of wood being smashed and turned to face the table, where only splinters remained.

'Holy shit, I'll really die if I get hit by that!' He thought to himself. 'Dammit, I'm really going to die after all!'

He felt his fight or flight instinct kick and scrambled for the door, running down the hall and entering a random room, hiding in it and hoping the hobo doctor wouldn't find him.

Today just got a whole lot worse.

Franken Stein walked about the boat.

He had been walking around the fourth floor of the ship just looking at what else was on here. From what he could tell, apart from the rooms they had come from, there really weren't any other objects in any of the rooms apart from furniture.

He couldn't quite figure the situation out, no matter how hard he thought.

He had already figured out that he must be in some alternate dimension. Or in a very well-constructed illusion, but the latter seemed less likely. The main reason that it seemed to be the first was that who would go so far to make a very convincing illusion when they forgot the two most important parts, his screw and there was no face on the sun? It didn't make sense.

Also, if he had been taken here, by who and why? Was it someone from this dimension? Or his home dimension? Or from some other third dimension?

Actually, that last on seemed to be the most likely, considering the others on the top deck were most likely in the same situation.

Especially after seeing their souls.

Every single one of them had some aspect that just itched that want to take them apart and see how they worked.

The first one he had seen was the orange haired ones simply because it was so strong and because of how large it was. It covered the entire boat, creating a barrier of swirly black and white all around.

The second one that he had taken an interest in was the one in the red coat and the long blonde hair in a ponytail. His soul, while not large like carrot top, had the interesting quality of being covered in alchemical symbols, with a solid stone door behind him, stretching beyond the bubble of his soul.

The other two blonds were also quite strange. One had two souls and was large enough to encompass half the ship, while the tallest one here seemed to pulse with a strange energy.

The last one to catch his attention before leaving was the purple haired woman with the glasses. Her soul... It had madness to it, with archaic symbols covering it. It reminded him of medusa's soul actually, except the arrows had been replaced by words.

It was beautiful. He could just stare at her all day and never tire of the dark beauty of her soul...

He headed back down quickly; not bothering to check for others as staying there longer would have had an effect on his mind, especially without the screw running through his head.

People back at death's academy had always wondered about the screw, perhaps he had gotten it in an accident or something similar. Truth was, that while it may have been an accident that had put it there, he hadn't bothered removing it because while it was there it seemed to curb some of his inner needs and also, after taking it out the first time, he had discovered it incredibly hard to control his own strength.

So he had kept it in. No problems there, other than the slight amount of rust it occasionally gained.

Now though, after he had woken up here, he had found the screw mysteriously missing.

Which, to his ire, he found himself fighting to keep himself under control.

And now he was down here, away from everyone else in order to perhaps find a replacement or maybe find a sea chart showing their current location, even if he had no idea where he was. The closest he had so far gotten to either of those goals had been the bolt with the word 'doctor' written on the flat part of the head, but it was only large enough to fit his hand.

After walking out of another empty room, he saw something out of the corner of his eye dart around a corner.

Stein instantly headed over in that direction and found man in a brown jacket with pants of the same color and spiky brown hair walk slowly down a hallway towards a door he had entered earlier. He had found a book lying on the table, but he hasn't been able to open it, so he had left it there to retrieve later.

He watched as the man carefully stepped through the hallway, before reaching the door without making the floorboards creak once, which was quite a feat.

Not that it would have been very hard for someone like him.

He carefully entered, closing the door behind him. Stein then subsequently walked through the hallway and opened the door a smidgen to observe what he was doing.

He had opened the book, which surprised him slightly. He wasn't able to see it from his perspective, but he could see his arm move and he could hear the flipping of pages.

He felt the urge to use soul perception, but knowing what every other soul was like, he knew it would simply cause him to want cut him up and see what made what he was, and that wasn't a very nice way to introduce one's self to people.

However, as the minutes dragged on, the urge grew greater and he decided to take a quick peek, just this once.

What he found surprised him.

Unlike every other person on this ship, the person had a surprisingly normal soul. But there was something about it that was off...

He stared at it a bit longer, trying to figure out what it was. But he just couldn't. It was like trying to find something that wasn't there.

At least, until he blinked.

What was once a normal soul was now a red one, covered in strange swirls and having a feature similar to his hair on top. But what was most startling was the thin line right near the bottom, that was slowly growing wider, showing a set of sharp teeth.

And then the eye. The one, large eye right in the center. It wasn't like looking at the kishin where one would slowly fall into madness. No, this eye slowly caused him to feel an intense amount of fear.

He blinked.

The soul was back to being completely average in every way, shape and form.

'What was that?' He thought to himself. 'It was like staring at kishin... But instead of madness, it caused fear...'

He saw that the man was now getting up. He had to decide now what to do. Was he a danger? Was he actually a normal person and he had just hallucinated it with the loss of the bolt in his head?

He decided to be safe and knock him out using soul force.

He raised his fist, concentrating to get the power right, as he was getting up from the chair.

He punched forward.

The man dodged by leaning backward toward his fist before his fist could hit.

"Surprising. You managed to dodge that without actually looking at me. Color me mildly impressed." He said. Perhaps this man did have some sort of ability after all? Perhaps battle precognition?

He reared back for another strike. This time, he was simply going to try and knock him to the floor with pure power, instead of trying to use soul force. He had felt himself use a bit more than he had meant to, which indicated that his control without it was a bit worse than he thought.

"Although I was only going to knock you out, now, I may have to do something a bit more... Drastic." He punched forward, but once again he dodged, albeit a lot sloppier than before. He hit the table again, completely crushing it with his strength. He hadn't actually meant to cause a table to be crushed. Either the table was very old, or without the screw he also couldn't gauge his own strength. Great.

He concluded that perhaps he had hallucinated what he had seen, seeing as anyone with that much menace in their soul would be able to at least attempt to fight back.

He attempted to try and tell him that he was wrong in his assumption, but he had already dashed down the hall.

Stein took a drag of the cigarette in his mouth before using soul perception to locate where he had gone to. He casually walked up to the door and gripped the handle, preparing to open it.

The sound of breaking wood along with a faint ringing entered his ears.

He looked to his right to find what appeared to be a black ball, which he recognized as a cannonball after less than a second of observation.

Another crash sounded, this time from his left, and he found a similar ball embedded in the floor.

He instantly came to the conclusion that they were under attack.

He quickly opened the room and grabbed the confused man who was looking through the window by the collar and quickly pulled him out of the room.

He ran upstairs with slightly struggling package in tow and arrived on deck to see everyone lined up on the right of the ship.

He walked over and dropped his package next to him, taking in another drag of his cigarette at what he saw on the horizon.

There, in the distance, were a set of three ships quickly approaching their location, frontal cannons firing on their prone ship.

"Well shit." He heard the man he had just dropped off say.

He couldn't help but agree with him.

* * *

anyway, that's that. yup. now off to think about my life.

Name: Ju Ingong

Manga/Manhwa: Transfer Student Storm Bringer

Ability(ies): none

Ju ingong is just an average guy who was born with a rather scary face. He knows this, but because he is a coward who cant fight, once people realize he is incredibly weak, they start picking on him and beating him up. That was basically how his life went until he transferred schools, where through a series of extremely lucky circumstances and quick thinking on his part, he managed to take over the entire school and beat the principal (who is able to scale a three story building in one leap) by knocking him out on accident, although no one knows about the accident part.

likes: not fighting, women, food

does not like: his face, cross-dressers, getting hurt


End file.
